Yes, I'd be happy to.
Where I work—and Dr. McLaughlin does, too—at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, we have a unique program to try to bring science, research and medical research—pediatric research, really—to bounding young scientists, to encourage high school students of all backgrounds to consider careers in research. To do that, twice a year we host a mini med school. It's usually around one topic. We've done diabetes three times. It's held over six evenings over a month and a half, and it reaches, when we do it in person, about 250 students. They come into the hospital, and they learn with some lectures and hands-on work with our pediatricians and our scientists at BC Children's Hospital.
Interestingly, during the pandemic, when we went virtual, we were even able to expand our reach, because we wanted to reach other parts of B.C., and people find it hard to come down to the Lower Mainland. The results have been really remarkable. I should say that the mini med school spans cancer, transplantation, immunology, infectious disease, mental health and diabetes.
We've had high school students come back from that program to become summer students, and a few have even gone on to Ph.D.s in medical school. The program has been in place for some 20 years now, and some have even come back to do further research training at the institute as Ph.D. students and post-docs. That's been, I think, a remarkable success, and I would love to see it happen elsewhere in the country.